5th Grade Weekly Update for Week of February 26th
Photo Highlight of the Week: Students loved gathering around the “campfire” to share their stories written about the Wild West! Cowboy Day was a big success!
ELA: On Monday, students will take their Winter Olympic Vocabulary test. These terms helped us throughout our comprehension practice we’ve been working on while the Winter Olympics are taking place. Last week, we learned about five different types of topic sentences, this week, we will review closing sentences. This will prepare us for our outlines! We will use our research note cards to create outlines that we will eventually take into the computer lab to type into a rough draft. In grammar, we’re going to review Unit 6: Capitalization, punctuation, and spelling to throughout the week to prepare for the test on Friday. Students can use www.grammarworkshop.com to help them review for the test by playing some the online games and/or quizzes. Pick Unit 6 on the left hand side of the screen to play the correct games.
History: Cowboy Day on Friday was so much fun! We ate smores around the “campfire” and listed to a bunch of tall tales! Students were also able to pick their groups for our next unit: Maya, Inca, and Aztec. This will be a group project where students will research various aspects of their ancient civilization to create a poster and presentation to share with the rest of the class. It’s a great way to practice working with others and organizing long-term projects with short-term goals.
Math: We loved exploring different types of graphs this week and creating box-and-whisker plots showing the current Olympic medal count! In the coming week, students will continue to practice analyzing data and creating graphs with real-world applications. We will learn how to interpret circle graphs and introduce the concept of probability.
Science: This week, students will love exploring simple machines, such as the fixed pulley. Through their investigations, they will discover how simple machines can make work feel easier without changing the amount of work done. I need your help collecting some common household items like paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls, etc. for our simple machines STEM challenge that will take place at the end of our unit. I’ll send home a list of items we are looking for with students next week. Thank you in advance for your help!
Other: Thank you for taking the time to meet last week for our parent conferences! During conferences, we discussed goals we have for your child. This week, I started meeting one on one with students to discuss these goals and help them develop a SMART goal plan to help achieve it. We also are focusing on building our study skills. This week, we read about strategies for success in developing our study skills. They included getting started, time management, organizing assignments, taking notes, and reviewing material. Then, students rated themselves in these areas to determine their strengths and weaknesses. Over the next few weeks, we will continue to develop these skills and put them into practice!